Sunday, October 23, 2011

And the old freight depot

Whistle Stop Donuts in Hopkinsville (KY) now has two buildings, near each other and (of course) near the train tracks. (In this photo, you can't see the original little Whistle Stop that's right next to the tracks, but it's marked by the yellow sign.). I don't know if they're going to move everything to the building on the left which has a larger parking lot, or if they're going to keep both locations.

On the other side of the train that's whizzing through town, you can see some scaffolding on the old freight depot. The exterior of the building is being restored to its original appearance. Jim Coursey, a local architect and historian, recently wrote in the Kentucky New Era that the depot is still structurally sound -- in fact, as solid as when it was first built. The metal roof on the building dates back to its construction in 1905, and it still doesn't leak. The Hopkinsville water department owns the property.

Words that imitate sounds

This evening, I was sorting through some old papers, and I came across some notes dated October 23. I left out the year when I wrote the date, but I think it was 1984. About that time, I took a class called "History of the English Language", and I must have saved only this little stack of pages from my notebook for that class.

On the long-ago October 23 when I made those notes, Dr. Eschlimann was wearing plaid pants. I know this to be a fact because Dr. E. always wore plaid pants. His lecture was about the ways that words enter the English language. My notes cover 17 different sources of words, with a list of examples for each one.

The list of onomatopoeic words (words that echo or imitate sounds) is kind of fun. Glancing through the list is like reading the "sound effects" of a comic strip. And it is dated October 23, so I decided to post it.

Saturday, October 15, 2011

A chance to set the record straight

I've written several times in the past about Camp Alcorn in Hopkinsville, KY, where about 300 Confederate soldiers died of disease and exposure during the Civil War. If this topic interests you, you'll enjoy the well-researched article at the link below:

This link leads to a Rootsweb military page about the Camp Alcorn burials in a potters field in Riverside Cemetery, and the later re-burial of "unknown" Confederate soldiers.

The author of this paper is William Meacham,
Honorary Research Fellow at the Centre for Asian Studies at the
University of Hong Kong. He lives in Hong Kong, as you might imagine,
but he has family ties to Christian County, KY. Mr. Meacham's research
indicates that 72 or more Confederate soldiers are still lying in
unmarked graves in Riverside Cemetery.

I am a "damyankee" transplanted in Christian County about 20 years ago, and most (though not all!) of my ancestors
fought on the Union side of the Civil War. But, despite my own leanings, I think that we in Christian County should locate and
mark the graves of these Confederate soldiers if we can. It is the decent thing to
do, especially considering the mishandling of important records and the mistakes made with the Camp Alcorn graves in the past.

The depot's floor plan

I found the following description of the L&N passenger depot in Hopkinsville, KY, in Buildings and Structures of American Railroads by Warren Gilman Berg. It was published in 1893, just one year after the Hopkinsville depot was built. Many details mentioned by Berg can still be observed today, but the stucco on the building's exterior seems to have been added since then.

I believe the floor plan of the depot was accidentally reversed in the book, so I changed it (image appears below) to what I think the building is in real life. Readers from Hopkinsville, please correct me if I'm wrong. Also, I altered some of the original punctuation of this passage, and I divided some of the paragraphs to make them easier to read on a screen.

Tower at the corner of
the ladies waiting room

The passenger depot of the Louisville & Nashville Railroad at Hopkinsville, Ky. is a single-story frame building, roofed with slate.

The main feature of the exterior is the tower at the corner of the ladies' waiting-room and the large circular bay-window projection of the agent's office at the centre of the building, which, combined with the cupola on the corner tower, the ridge-cresting and ornamental gable fronts, together with the general finish of the building, causes it to present a very handsome appearance.

The "circular bay-window projection"
of the agent's office next to tracks

The ground-floor is divided into:

a ladies' waiting-room, 17 ft. X 20 ft., with an octagonal alcove inside the tower at the corner of the room;

a ladies' toilet-room, 5 ft. X 8 ft. 6 in.;

an agent's office, 14 ft. X 17 ft., with ticket-windows leading into the ladies' waiting-room, the general waiting-room, and the colored waiting-room;

a colored waiting-room, 14 ft. X 14 ft.;

a general waiting-room, 20 ft. X 24 ft.; and

a baggage-room, 16 ft. X 18 ft.

Note: The platform and train tracks were on the east side of the building.
"Colored" people had to walk around the bulding to reach the boarding area.

The exterior of the building is sheathed with horizontal and upright ornamental boarding, in panels, ornamental shingles and square panelling frieze-work and gable fronts. The doors leading into the ladies' waiting-room and the general waiting-room are double doors, 5 ft. X 7 ft. 6 in., with transom overhead. The lower sash of the windows have one large pane of glass, while the upper sash are surrounded with a border of small stained-glass lights.

Sunday, October 02, 2011

Country fun

I bought a firewood-rack kit at Lowes on clearance last spring. It looked really easy. The only tool needed was a screwdriver to put in four screws. The finished rack looked sort of like a shelf with attached bookends, quite similar to the rack at this link. The kit had the end pieces and screws in it, and the buyer had to supply two 2x4s. The directions said it would take about 15 minutes to assemble.

Today, I decided to put the kit together. I got a couple of used-but-sturdy 2x4s out of the shed and tried to "slip" the end pieces onto them, per the instructions. Ha ha. It took me an hour and a half. I had to rasp off the high spots for four inches back on each end of each 2x4. Then I beat the pieces on with a sledge hammer. (Maybe I should buy a little wood plane? Maybe I should have used new 2x4s. Maybe I should have let Dennis do it!)

I still haven't completed the assembly. I quit and came inside when I got the last piece beaten on. Tomorrow, I'll put in the screws that hold the pieces in place, whether they're necessary or not. I think it will take about, oh, maybe 15 minutes.

Just think of all the entertainment I've had already, and I haven't even stacked the firewood on the rack yet. That kit was definitely a bargain.

IT IS STILL BEST to be honest and truthful; to make the most of what we have; to be happy with simple pleasure; and to be cheerful and have courage when things go wrong.(Laura Ingalls Wilder, 1867-1957)